Uniqueness in Writing

Hi all.  Joey here.  BTW, my pen name is JD Rhode, so don't worry if you see posts with that author.  I though I'd share this:

All writers, famous or not, have their own style of writing.  Maybe “style” isn’t specific enough here.  What I mean is every writer has such a specific uniqueness to what they do that one can open up a title-less book, read a few pages, and say, “Oh yeah, that’s Stephen King, all right,” or whoever it may be.  I really hope that somebody does that for my books-if only one person did, I’d consider myself a great author.

So what is this unique style, and how does one get it?  Life experiences, likes and dislikes, imagination, the list goes on.  I thought I’d just take a couple minutes here and share with you a few things that identify my stuff as being JD Rhode’s.  Has anybody noticed:

1. In all of my stories, if whoever goes out to eat, it’s always at IHOP.  Why, I don’t know.  I love IHOP, but it is not my favorite restaurant.  Nonetheless, that’s the place to go. (BTW, that isn’t the ‘hot spot’ anymore; guess you’ll just have to read my newer stuff to find out where is.)

2. In everything I write, story, poem, whatever, the title is always in the piece.  I think this one got started by accident, but once I realized I was doing it, I liked it enough to keep it going.

3. In every story (novel, short, etc) I incorporate the music I like.  Now, this one’s very hard to notice because a lot of bands are not known to many people-everybody likes a different genre of music.  Here are some examples.  “She could still hear what they were doing, even being three doors down the hall”; Three Doors Down, anybody?   “Boss gave me a three days grace period to do my project.”  Three Days Grace.  However, what do I do with the bands I love that have one word names or weird names: The Dreaming, The Cure, ACDC, etc.  Fear not guys; you, too, get a plug, although harder to detect by people who don’t know me.  I use a whole line from a song; “Exactly what do you want from me?” she demanded in frustration.  “What do You Want” by The Dreaming.  Of course for that, you have to be familiar with that same song, or you’ll just read on, but if you do know it… J

4. Literally every time you read the phrases “shining in the darkness” or “dark force”, they Are nods to Sega, my all time favorite gaming company.  I might say “shining force”, or “miracle warriors”, too, but, for some reason, they’re harder to work into the sentence.

Let’s see…what else do I do?  Those are the four biggies, but a magician never tells all her tricks.  I guess you’ll just have to get reading.  Also, I hope this inspired you to delve into you own little, unique bag of tricks for all of your works of art.